Development of an historical landscape photography ... ?· Development of an historical landscape photography…

Development of an historical landscape

photography database to support landscape

change analysis in the Northeast of Portugal

Youssef Qaouqaou

Dissertation presented to the School of Agriculture of Bragana in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of Master of Science in Forest Resources Management

Advisors

Prof. Doutor Srgio Deusdado

School of Agriculture of Bragana (PORTUGAL)

Prof. Doutor Joo Azevedo

School of Agriculture of Bragana (PORTUGAL)

Prof. Doutor El Ayachi Sehhar

Agronomic and Veterinary Institute Hassan II (MOROCCO)

Bragana July 2016

,

lIn the name of Allah, most gracious, most mercifu

Say, Indeed, my prayer, my rites of sacrifice, my living and my

dying are for Allah, Lord of the worlds

Acknowledgments

First I would like to thank my thesis advisor Srgio Deusdado, Professor in the Escola

Superior Agraria at the Instituto Politcnico de Bragana. His office door was always

open whenever I need help about my research or writing. He consistently allowed this

paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I

needed it.

I would like also to thank my co-advisors who were involved in the supervision of this

research project: Joo Azevedo professor in the Escola Superior Agraria at the Instituto

Politcnico de Bragana and El Ayachi Sehhar Professor in the Agronomy Department

of Agronomy and Veterinary Institute HASSAN II. Without their passionate

participation and input, the validation survey could not have been successfully

conducted.

I would also like to acknowledge Nuno Carvalho, technician in the Escola Superior

Agrria at the Instituto Politcnico de Bragana, I am gratefully indebted for his very

valuable comments and help during the practical phase of the project.

I am deeply grateful to all members of the jury, Amlcar Teixeira and jos exposto, for

agreeing to read the manuscript and to participate in the defense of this thesis.

My sincere thanks to the Faculty and administrative body of the Instituto Politcnico

de Bragana and Agronomy and Veterinary Institute HASSAN II for giving me all

the necessary knowledge during my studies in Rabat and Bragana.

Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents, my sister Khadija,

my brother Ahmed and my friends for providing me with unfailing support and

continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of

research and writing of this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible

without them. Thank you.

Abstract

Repeat photography is an efficient, effective and useful method to identify trends of

changes in the landscapes. It was used to illustrate long-term changes occurring in the

landscapes. In the Northeast of Portugal, landscapes changes is currently driven mostly

by agriculture abandonment and agriculture and energy policy. However, there is a need

to monitoring changes in the region using a multitemporal and multiscale approach.

This project aimed to establish an online repository of oblique digital photography from

the region to be used to register the condition of the landscape as recorded in historical

and contemporary photography over time as well as to support qualitative and

quantitative assessment of change in the landscape using repeat photography techniques

and methods.

It involved the development of a relational database and a series of web-based services

using PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor language, and the development of an interface, with

Joomla, of pictures uploading and downloading by users. The repository will make

possible to upload, store, search by location, theme, or date, display, and download

pictures for Northeastern Portugal. The website service is devoted to help researchers to

obtain quickly the photographs needed to apply RP through a developed search engine.

It can be accessed at: http://esa.ipb.pt/digitalandscape/.

Keywords: Repeat photography, landscape change, PHP/MySQL, online database,

Relational database.

Resumo

A fotografia histrica um mtodo til e eficiente para realizar estudos comparativos e

evolutivos das alteraes da paisagem e, em geral, da geografia. Tem sido amplamente

usado para ilustrar as alteraes mais importantes ocorridas cronologicamente nas

paisagens. No Nordeste de Portugal, as alteraes da paisagem devem-se, sobretudo, ao

abandono da explorao agrcola que teve como consequncia a florestao de novas

reas, bem como pelas construes para aproveitamento da energia hidrulica ou elica.

Em smula, evidente a necessidade de monitorizar as alteraes da geografia da regio

usando uma abordagem multi-temporal e multi-escala.

Este trabalho teve por objetivo principal a implementao de um repositrio digital para

registos fotogrficos histricos da paisagem da regio de Trs-os-Montes, com o intuito

de disponibilizar servios web que permitem o armazenamento e o acesso aos registos

fotogrficos histricos e contemporneos das paisagens da regio, permitindo assim

uma anlise quantitativa e qualitativa da evoluo dessas paisagens.

Em termos prticos, envolveu a criao de uma base de dados relacional e uma pletora

de servios web usando recursos de programao para a web, nomeadamente PHP e

Javascript. Requereu igualmente a criao de um website para a centralizao e

disponibilizao dos servios, este foi elaborado com base em Joomla. Assim,

disponibiliza-se comunidade acadmica, e no s, um conjunto de servios digitais

para o estudo, com base em fotografia, das alteraes na paisagem em Trs-os-Montes.

O website pode ser acedido em http://esa.ipb.pt/digitalandscape/.

Palavras-chave: Fotografia histrica da paisagem, alteraes da paisagem,

PHP/MySQL, bases de dados online, base de dados relacional.

Index

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ 3

Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 4

Resumo ............................................................................................................................. 5

Figures .............................................................................................................................. 8

Scripts ............................................................................................................................... 9

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 10

1.1. Problem ........................................................................................................ 11

1.2. Objectives ..................................................................................................... 11

1.3. Methodology ................................................................................................ 12

1.4. Document organization ................................................................................ 12

2. Related work ........................................................................................................... 13

2.1. Oblique photography ....................................................................................... 13

2.2. Repeat photography ......................................................................................... 13

2.3. Application of repeat photography .................................................................. 15

2.4. Repeat photography databases ......................................................................... 17

3. Material and methods ............................................................................................. 19

3.1. Database ........................................................................................................... 19

3.1.1. Relational database model ........................................................................ 19

3.1.2. Entity Relationship (ER) model ............................................................... 20

3.1.3. Database management system (DBMS) ................................................... 20

3.1.4. SQL (Structured Query Language) .......................................................... 21

3.1.5. MySQL ..................................................................................................... 21

3.2. PHP/JavaScript ................................................................................................ 22

3.3. Content Management System (CMS)/Joomla ................................................. 24

4. Developed work ...................................................................................................... 26

4.1. System architecture .......................................................................................... 26

4.1.1. Framework ................................................................................................ 26

4.1.2. Conceptual Model .................................................................................... 27

4.2. Database: Structure and implementation ......................................................... 28

4.2.1. Structure and tables .................................................................................. 29

4.2.2. Entity-Relation model .............................................................................. 31

4.2.3. Implementation and maintenance ............................................................. 32

4.3. Web based service and interface developed .................................................... 32

4.3.1. Integration: interface and database management (JOOMLA) .................. 33

4.3.2. PHP Modules / JavaScript ........................................................................ 33

4.3.3. Users and available services ..................................................................... 36

4.3.4. Users feedback and usability .................................................................... 37

4.4. Hardware and interconnection description ...................................................... 40

5. Results & Discussion .............................................................................................. 41

5.1. Methodology evaluation .................................................................................. 42

5.2. Experimental results ........................................................................................ 45

5.3. Results interpretation and conclusion .............................................................. 46

5.4. Critical review .................................................................................................. 49

5.5. Future development ......................................................................................... 50

6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 52

References ...................................................................................................................... 53

8

Figures

Figure 1. Diagram representing the architecture of Joomla ........................................... 24

Figure 2. Simplified diagram of the software structure of DigitaLandscape ................. 26

Figure 3.The Digitalandscape system's functional architecture ..................................... 27

Figure 4. Entity-Relation Diagram ................................................................................. 31

Figure 5. Digitalandscape interface ................................................................................ 33

Figure 6. Form to upload images and define their location ............................................ 38

Figure 7. Form for author data ....................................................................................... 38

Figure 8 Form to define theme, technique and the geographical coordinates ................ 39

Figure 9. Form to describe the image before uploading ................................................. 39

Figure 10. Form to filter images by date ........................................................................ 40

Figure 11 Success model of an information system ....................................................... 41

Figure 12. The structure of "store" table ........................................................................ 43

Figure 13. "Store" table contents .................................................................................... 43

Figure 14. Message showing the error location .............................................................. 44

Figure 15. Joomla Template ........................................................................................... 44

Figure 16. User registration form ................................................................................... 45

Figure 17. How to use the website ................................................................................. 46

Figure 18. Page show the registered users ...................................................................... 48

9

Scripts

Code 1. Excerpt of the script explaining the joining of tables ....................................... 31

Code 2. Excerpt of script explaining connection to DigitaLandscape database ............. 34

Code 3. Excerpt of script explaining uploading image .................................................. 34

Code 4. Excerpt of script explaining downloading images ............................................ 35

Code 5. JavaScript to check the geographical coordinates using Google Maps ............ 36

10

1. Introduction

Monitoring landscapes becomes today necessary, especially in the context of climate

change, agriculture abandonment and energy policy. A subject that interests several

areas, but it is not within the reach of everyone to optimize the solutions aiming to

resolve their problems.

Many different tools were developed to acquire information on changes in the

environment, such as remote sensing, geographic information system, cartography etc.

but most of them were limited because of the use of the large scales, and also because

they are based on knowledge and techniques to analyze and to interpret the results

which are not always mastered by most of the users.

For these reasons, we must think of an alternative approaches to track and assess

landscapes at different scales, and that can be used for different purposes and in many

different fields.

In the face of such challenges, the development of repeat photography...